Melton is a professional engineer, environmental researcher, author, filmmaker and front man for the band Climate Change.
First Published on Truthout, August 27, 2014 (link) The fundamental climate change policy question today is not how much we should reduce carbon dioxide emissions by when, but what will currently proposed carbon dioxide emissions reductions do to our climate in the near-term? In addition, what are the ramifications of short-lived climate pollutants that are…
Direct atmospheric removal (air capture) should not be confused with geoengineering. These air capture techniques, old and new, remove CO2 from the atmosphere just like we remove other pollutants from say, water in our wastewater facilities, or simply sweeping up dirt from the kitchen floor. Existing technologies extract CO2 from the air with chemicals such…
The Arctic is warming more than twice as fast as the global average, Arctic sea ice and Northern Hemisphere snow cover are decreasing faster than the models project, more frequent extreme weather events are occurring and more frequent severe winters are occurring too. Three potential drivers of these events are: changes in storm tracks, the…
The North Atlantic is warming and Greenland’s ice loss has quadrupled in the last 20 years. Warm water is getting under the floating edges of outlet glaciers and causing thinning which in-turn causes the glaciers to speed up. New research has identified another and possibly new dimension to the increase of outlet glacier flow that…
This presentation was given to the Texas Chapter of Mensa on August 16, 2014. (link to presentation) Calling it climate change, global warming, climate disruption — these all scare people or mean things to them that are not good for the cause. Call it what it is—Climate Pollution. We know what pollution is and what…
Damage from wind, bark beetles and wildfires have increased in Europe’s forests since 1900. This report quantifies these damages and models then out to 2030 for the purpose of evaluating forest management techniques on limiting damages. There work finds that management techniques will have a difficult time keeping up and relative to the overall European…
First published on the Rag Blog, August 5, 2014 The future is bright and breezy, not black and dirty. Whatever is going on with Austin Energy misses some very important and fundamental news. AUSTIN — Really? Austin Energy is against alternative energy? A report in the Austin American Statesman on Friday, August 1, says just…
When permafrost melts, methane can build up beneath impermeable soils and suddenly erupt, apparently. In the formerly frozen tundra of Siberia, this is exactly what seems to have started happening. This 100 foot-wide hole of some obvious but unstated depth could have been caused by a meteorite, missile explosion or perhaps aliens. But this is…
Why is the warming “pause” happening? Carbon dioxide emissions continue to skyrocket. Is it because of natural cycles or because climate scientists have a conspiracy agenda? Or are they simply wrong? The temperature rise has slowed slightly when looking at the short-term, but only slightly. Deniers however say that since 1998 it hasn’t changed at…
First published on Truthout.org This article reports on a National Research Council literature review of why and how warming in the Arctic and arctic amplification is creating what appears to be more extreme winter weather in the U.S. Northeast and Northern Europe.
The last five years have seen 30 to 60 percent more rain in the Central Texas Highland Lakes watershed than in the worst five years of the drought of the 1950s, and the latest National Weather Service 30-year rainfall averages for the watershed have increased seven to twenty percent. Austin is up nine percent. Opposite…
Over the mid Northern Mid- and High Latitudes minimum temperatures will increases more than maximum temperatures. In other words, if it warms ten degrees in the daytime on average, it will only warm twenty degrees at night, on average across the globe at these latitudes. What he basically found was that that cold periods are…
Screen et al., Amplified mid-latitude planetary waves favour particular regional weather extremes, Nature Climate Change, June 22, 2014. Recent publications tell us that a warmer planet will have more cold extremes over high latitudes and a little south of there (the Great Lakes and northward in the US). This is because of Polar Amplification where…
For a generation we have proposed climate pollution control policy based on the 100-year time frame and simple “test tube” lab evaluation of the warming potential of individual greenhouse gases (also called “global warming potential” or GWP). This was once enough to prevent dangerous climate change, but the times have changed. Not only do we…
Wow! $0.05 per KwH! Five cents a kilabuck, amazing. The contract Austin City Council recently approved was supposed to be for 50 MW of solar generating capacity, but the price was so good, they bumped the project to 150 Mw making it tied for tenth largest in the world. Why is this happening so much…
The new discipline of global warming psychology tells that clear and concise communications of climate science can no longer provide the public knowledge needed to advance climate pollution policy. In 2013 alone, 13,000 papers were published about “global climate change” or closely related topics. How scientists interact with the public however has changed very little,…
From the 2013 Yale report Climate Change in the American Mind. “Only one in four know that there is a scientific consensus on climate change—only 25 percent of Americans understand that there is no argument about whether or not global warming is occurring among climate scientists. Between 97 and 98 percent of actively publishing climate…
Presentation for Sun City Democrats, Saturday May 16, 2014: https://climatediscovery.org/Climate_Change_in_Central_Texas_May_2014.ppt
First published on the Rag Blog April 23, 2014 Link — Sea level rise is accelerating. At some point, our barrier islands will cross a disintegration threshold and begin to disappear. Because every mile of every beach is created differently, we will see some beaches begin to suffer sooner than others. PADRE ISLAND — For…
Happy Earth Day everyone! My recent survey of sea level rise erosion on Padre Island has motivated me to produce another sea level rise documentary (see Beach Report 041414). Any funding out there? Donations? It will be a climate change adventure rockumentary with good news: the solutions to climate pollution will be no more expensive…
